Intel unveiled its iconic Core 2 Duo family 20 years ago — legendary chip dethroned AMD Athlon, restoring the chipmaker’s performance lead

An Intel Core 2 Duo CPU.

Today marks 20 years since the first raft of Intel Core 2 Duo processors, codename Conroe, was launched. Ten Intel Core 2 Duo and Intel Core 2 Extreme processors were unveiled for consumer and business desktop and laptop PCs and workstations on July 27, 2006. We were lucky enough to test Intel’s now legendary new desktop processors earlier in the month, and our reviewer anointed the Core 2 Duo “the new king.” Our early hands-on review underlined that “as soon as Core 2 Duo hits the market, it will outperform the complete Athlon 64 family (X2 and FX) in all areas, including gaming, where AMD has traditionally been very strong.”

The four mainstream and one high-end desktop Core 2 Duo processors that launched on July 27, 2006

Core 2 Model	Clock Speed	Multiplier	Front Side Bus Speed	L2 Cache
Extreme X6800	2,933 MHz	x11	266 MHz (FSB1066 QDR)	4 MB
Duo E6700	2,666 MHz	X10	266 MHz (FSB1066 QDR)	4 MB
Duo E6600	2,400 MHz	X9	266 MHz (FSB1066 QDR)	4 MB
Duo E6400	2,133 MHz	X8	266 MHz (FSB1066 QDR)	2 MB
Duo E6300	1,866 MHz	X7	266 MHz (FSB1066 QDR)	2 MB